


The Right To Die

by morituritesalutant



Category: The Musketeers (2014)
Genre: Androids, Dehumanisation, F/M, First Time, Sylvie-centric, Violence (mentioned), alternative universe, brief appearance of the other musketeers, space
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-07-19
Updated: 2016-07-19
Packaged: 2018-07-25 10:04:48
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 7,513
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/7528501
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/morituritesalutant/pseuds/morituritesalutant
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Androids aren't recognised as sentient beings with rights. <br/>Sylvie has been able to slip under the radar and hopes she can continue to go unnoticed. She cares about helping other androids, but it's simply too dangerous. Then she arrives on the planet Paris and realises she wants to find a reason to stop running and learn how she can define herself. (The sad and heartbroken man who laughs when she makes jokes has probably something to do with it as well.)</p>
            </blockquote>





	The Right To Die

**Author's Note:**

> Initially started with the thought, what if s1 Athos met Sylvie? Turned into an ode to android rights instead/as well.  
> Much help from the most fantastic beta on earth, [Jewel. ](http://archiveofourown.org/users/jewel)
> 
> (warning for the death of an unknown character in the beginning.)  
> spoilers for the whole of s3, there are a lot of references to canon.  
> I feel the rating is in-between T and M.

Sylvie doesn’t realise she has become tired of planet-hopping until she is about to arrive on Paris.  
It isn’t a particular interesting planet. She vaguely remembers it’s been nicknamed ‘the sunken river,’ but why she doesn't know. 

It's one of the worlds that has come less than well out of the 180 years war, struggling to keep its head above the water.  She isn't sure why she chose this particular planet,  
but it seemed to have the perfect combination of being big enough to ensure she will not stand out and small enough to have minimal military presence.

As she studies its worn-out facade from the window of the Aviator 3003, she studies the reflection of her own tired face in the glass.  
The changing of planets used to be the ultimate form of freedom, to walk through the scans undetected, to hear the steward say, “welcome aboard, miss,” and no one would know.

   
But now there are so many moments she wishes she didn’t have to pass, to conform to society as what they imagine —demand— people to look like.   
In all their freedom, humans are among the most restricted peoples she has ever walked among.

In all their liberty, they have nothing but constraints.

She studies the androids on the ships. They are the kind of blue look-through ones, matching the interior of the spaceship, the old 6 models.  
They bring her her drink and she swears soundlessly to them that she will help set them free one day.  
Soundless, because she's afraid, soundless because it's a promise she might not be able to keep.  They look at her with bland eyes and expressionless mouths when she thanks them.

 

 _Humanity shouldn’t be the requirement to live in dignity_ , she thinks, repeating the words that once were said to her when her sisters came for her, _we are sentient beings.  
_ _We have the right to live and die on our own accord._

She returns her gaze to widow again, to Paris. It looks the same as before.  
She can’t help but linger on her own home planet, well, home, if she can still call it that.

Storage locker 5200-BC.

She laughs out loud.She is almost happy that the whole planet was blown to pieces, almost, because it gave her her freedom, but lost lives are never a worthy price.

She lives in houses now, no longer in humid and small spaces, she dresses the way she wishes, she decides what she does.  
Sometimes she stays in bed the whole day simply because she can.  
But maybe, just maybe, she’ll find a reason to stay on this wounded world.

Planet-hopping and always looking over your shoulder gets tiresome.  
She laughs again, she gets tired nowadays, _who would have thought.  
_  

—-

She is starting to understand why they call this planet the sunken river.  
The city she’s in is unnamed, the streets unimportant. Dirty, dark, dancing.  
There are so many people on the streets, but instead of suffocating everything feels sharp.

Two days pass in haze, like the first time she had bought a box of valecianas.  
While she doesn’t need to eat, she had gorged herself on them.  
Not tasting them in her haste, the juice running over her hands, her face, into the small space where the panels don’t quite meet up where her neck ends and her breast starts.

With fascination she had studied herself in her mirror and then started to eat another one and another one and another one.  
She felt powerful, like a god arises from an dark blue ocean on a faraway planet.  
  
The smell heavy, the air heavier. She had come to realise what she truly was, earthed, grounded, real.  

And so she inhales and swallows the taste of the unnamed city too, gorges herself on it.

 

\--

 It changes the next morning. She wakes up from her stupor with a shock when she finds the dead body of a woman outside her house.

Sylvie doesn’t realise she’s dead initially, she thinks maybe the woman is asleep.  
She tries to wake her at first, not to send her away from her doorstep, but to allow her to sleep inside, shower, eat, but the woman isn’t asleep and her skin is so very cold.

Sylvie stumbles back with a silent scream.  
She falls across her porch and back against the door. Pain shoots through her legs, but it doesn’t register, she’s too distraught.

   
It isn’t as though she has never seen someone dead before.  
She used to see androids ripped apart all the time, disregarded as though their lives meant nothing. Left behind to drown when the water came.  
Given enough humanity to have their lungs fill with water, but not enough to be saved.  
 

But a dead human, not before. 

She still feels the same hurt, for no one deserves this fate. It seems the cold at night, or maybe the hunger, has taken this woman.

Sylvie goes back into the house, she pours herself a glass of water that she doesn’t drink, binds her hair back with a wrap and searches the house.  
She can only find a spade, but a spade is good enough and so she starts.

 She digs a hole slowly, sweat starts dripping over her face, from her neck to her back. After a while she gives up trying to sweep it away.  
She works in silence for a long time until she has made a shallow grave in an unnamed city for an unnamed person.

She lays the body in there, carefully. She crosses the street and picks wildflowers from the field across her house and spreads them around her person’s face.  
She closes the earth with careful scoops to let the woman sleep and asks the planet and her moons to take care of her now.

 She drops herself on the step before her door and looks at the unearthed ground before her. Green has become a beautiful dark brown.  
Her heart is racing and she feels like weeping. She goes back inside and drinks the water she had left. 

 She cries then, in quiet sobs alone on the cold tiles of her kitchen floor.

 

—- 

The next morning she goes out and buys a valeciana tree.  
She plants it near the grave, she doesn’t quite know what takes over her, the tree feels like permanence, but it doesn’t scare her.

The haze is finished and Sylvie’s eyes have been opened. She can no longer walk through the city without noticing the bodies everywhere anymore.  
Some are dead, but most are in the stage of disappearing, no reason to live, no way to survive. They don’t return her gaze.  
She is reminded of the blue 6 models on the Aviator. 

All day long she digs graves and buries people. She walks home exhausted, although she runs on sun energy, which she has gotten plenty of today, she can barely lift her arms.  
She has come to realise that most of the people in neighbourhood she’s living in are refugees of the 180 years war. 

Governments decide to fight wars, but who kills and murders in their name? Who suffers for their victories?

It’s these people here.

And she knows if they came together, they could change everything, but she’s torn by whispers in her mind.  
Organising this wouldn’t be keeping a low profile and there is always a danger someone will rat her out.  
The thought haunts her all the way back.

When she returns home the tree is gone.   
For a moment her soul isn’t sure what to feel. Anger or despair, her arms are still tired, but her heart is on fire.

A thunder collects under her sternum. A heavy kind that were common on her home planet.  
You could always feel it before it arrived, the sky would turn a dark purple, the air was heavy and you could barely breathe, it would be hot and humid and then suddenly, everything would turn cold. Purple turned black and thunder cracked.

The air in her lungs feels violet and becomes darker.

She runs to the market and another one and another one until she finds a new tree.  
Her thunder energy gives her the strength to dig another hole and she plants it outside the house once more.  
Fire burns, thunder cracks. 

Damn living in the shadows, damn not being noticed, her mind shouts. She has found a reason to stay.

 She goes by every house in street and she tells every owner the same line before they can ask her why she’s there.  
“You see that tree over there? You better not touch it, it’s mine and it will stay there, understood?” and before she hears an answer she moves to the next house. 

“You better not touch it.”

“You better not touch it.”

“You better not touch it.” 

    
After number 15 the thunder inside has turned into a mere drizzle. Exhaustion is catching up again. _One more door and then I’ll go home_ , Sylvie tells herself.  
She hopes it’s enough for the story to spread and to keep away any future thieves.

She knocks on the door.  
A man opens.  
They look at each other in silence for a few seconds.

He looks like one of the disappearing too.  
She’s taken aback and she hesitates, it makes her smile, who would have thought. She has never hesitated before.  
The mournful man looks up to her, he smiles too.

He's faster in his response and before she can say her repeated words, he asks “what can I do for you?”

  
She stares a few seconds too long before she gives him an answer.  
“I planted a tree in front of my house and I don’t want anyone to steal it. Again,” she answers.  
  
“That seems reasonable,” he responds quickly. "I promise I won’t touch it."   
He doesn’t deny her silent accusation, although it’s very clear he hadn’t been the original culprit. 

“Okay,” she says hesitantly, taken aback by his pleasant answer. “Thank you.”  
Sylvie turns around, vaguely waves a goodbye. 

“Wait!” he shouts, then softer he repeats himself, “wait?”

He hesitates, the look on his face shows he doesn’t hesitate often.  
It makes her smile and he smiles in return again.

 “You were the one that buried all the voyagers, didn’t you?”

Sylvie nods. ”I did,” she answers, “but they’re refugees. We should not call people differently than what they are, it hides the truth.”

There is something changing in the man’s face, an emotion he himself is trying to figure out.  
“Refugees,” he whispers in agreement. He looks hesitant again. She smiles to encourage him. 

“You didn’t even know them, why would you go through all that trouble?”

Her smile fades.  
She wonders what it takes to make one so cynical, although his interest in her actions would argue the contrary, and so do the tremor in his bones and the look in his bruised eyes. 

“If one can, then one should," she responds softly and leaves it at that.

He looks at her, the emotions on his face become more recognisable. Surprise, or perhaps doubt.  
“Wait?” he asks again.

 He enters the house for a few minutes and comes out, completely this time.  
He seems taller than before. He might look like one, but doesn’t move like one of the disappearing, his bones are still trembling, but his pace is steady.

 Perhaps it’s only a part of him that’s fading away.  
_Tell me, handsome heartbroken one_ , she smiles. Curiosity, she’s felt that one before, but not for another being, not in this way at least.

 He hands her a shovel.  
Another laugh escapes her. “What’s that for?”

 “Your work wasn’t bad before, but this will make it easier.” 

 “Really,” she answers, her tone light and challenging. “What about showing me, tomorrow? Teach me how to do it?”

She thinks about winking. The thought surprises her.

The man’s face shows surprise as well. How can one look so old and young at the same time?  
“Okay,” he answers. He agrees almost too quickly. 

“Okay,” she echoes, and then her own curiosity takes the better of her, “and what’s my teacher’s name?”

“Athos,” he answers.

“Sylvie” she says quickly before he can ask her. She shakes his hand that he has offered her, it’s dry and calloused, but warm.  
She wonders what her hand feels like to him. 

“See you tomorrow then. It’s a date.” This time she does wink. 

——

 

They bury more people together, but help the living too.  
And every time she hitches up her skirt to climb up the scaffold she and Athos are building that separates their neighbourhood from the next, his eyes linger, before he looks away like he’s been caught doing something he shouldn’t have done. 

But he doesn't know that her eyes linger on him as well.

 Days pass in an easy rhythm. She comes home exhausted and sleeps deeply.  
The few dreams she has are of lingering gazes and regained emotions. 

Some of the disappearing slowly start to gather around her. They follow her instructions closely and come to her for advice.  
She starts to notice for the first time in her life that people are willing to listen to her.  
They are interested even, they take her seriously as she argues for their existence, their right to dignity, their right to live and die as they wish.

She argues for others than them alone and she hopes that among the group surrounding her, there is at least one of her own kind that takes her words to heart.   
She searches for them in the masses and feels relieved and saddened at the same time when she finds no recognition in any of the listeners' eyes.

  
\---   


The sun hasn’t quite risen yet, hesitantly it waits at the horizon before it’s time to show herself.

Sylvie likes the unnamed city the most when it's like this, quiet in the moment before it awakens, the moment in which time is unmoving, the streets are empty, the air feels clean for once, but there is tension in the air, who knows what this new day will bring.

 It might rain today, it might not.Not knowing makes her feel free, because it reminds her of how nothing is determined.

  
Athos however dislikes it greatly, mostly because it means he's forced to wake up early and he tends to be rather grumpy as a consequence.  
When he exists his house he always look up the sky with a deep sigh as though he knows with certainty it will be raining that day.  
Then he looks at her and smiles regardless, as though it's something he has no control over.  
That makes her feel free too.

It’s the same pattern every day, the shifting of his emotions slowly and surely as mountains might move.  


"What are we up to today?" he asks one morning. 

"Sanitation work," she answers cheerfully. 

He looks at her as if she’s just said something bizarre. She might have.  
Around Athos she tends to let her guard down more than around others and it is often not until later that she realises she’s done something strangely, something a little bit off.  
It’s never extremely outstanding and not many will notice, but she’s created a ripple in her human facade nonetheless. 

It happens most often when she’s around children. They’re fascinating to her, after all she didn’t have a childhood of her own and can’t quite relate to their thinking.  
Although one might argue she’s growing up herself, discovering who she is.

She has noticed she does things impulsively as of lately, she never did that before.  
Is she becoming more human? Or was she always like this but did she never get the opportunity before to discover herself?

 It confuses her, to think of where to draw the line of what is human and what is android and whether there is a line at all.  
  
But children, they remain foreign to her. She tried to have a conversation with the nine year old girl next door the other day, who had interrupted her mumbling mid-sentence and said,“you’re really weird, I like you.” Sylvie isn’t quite able to follow that reasoning at all, but she appreciated it, “thanks,” that had made girl laugh even more.  


For now she isn’t quite ready for kids she thinks, but maybe one day, maybe Athos can help her speak with them better.

  
“Did I say something strange?” she asks him.

 “No, not at all. Sometimes I can’t quite believe you’re real-,” his word choice should worry her, but it doesn’t. “—really this cheerful,” he continues his sentence.  


“Well, I’m this cheerful because you’ll be doing most of the dirty work,” she responds cheekily.  
  
He groans loudly, but a small smile appears, the one he can’t control and Sylvie thinks they’ll be fine.

 

— 

Sylvie looks at Athos while’s his working.  
He’s taken his jacket off and his well-defines muscles show under his shirt.  
Sweat is dripping slowly over his face. She’s enjoying the view and she’s pretty sure he knows it too. 

_Athos_. She likes him. He quietly accepts her as she is. He cares much, even though he prefers to hide it.

She thinks her questions about this planet and his world amuse him a lot, but he doesn’t make fun of her. He never has.  
Or maybe it isn’t amusement, maybe it’s awe, she isn’t quite sure how to distinguish those two emotions, she hasn’t experienced the latter herself yet, that makes it harder to read people.

 She likes his way of phrasing things. He tends to make very normal comments, but the way he says is different, meant to be comical, dry.  
She looks over to him again.  
He’s in the hole in the ground, cleaning out the clotted sewer pipe.  
He looks disgusted with everything, but he still did it.  
  
She’s been meaning to flirt with him for quite some time now and for some reason studying him from a close distance touches her, the way he's trying not to gag.  
She had made some study the previous days of people that like each other, they meet up often, they give each other compliments and gifts, Athos and she have done all of that.

No better time than the present.

   
“I like the way you speak,” she says, “when you are being sarcastic."

He looks up, the same look of amusement, or awe, “Are _you_ being sarcastic?”

 “No, I genuinely like the way you speak,” it sounds serious and too honest so she winks, trying to change her tone.  
She's pretty sure the damage is done and she doesn't mind it one bit.  


Athos breathes in a little too sharply and starts coughing immediately, inhaling the smell around them.

“I forgot about the smell too,” Sylvie comments, Athos looks at her dumbfounded.   
  
“Are you all right?,” she adds, when he keeps staring.

“Yes, uh, yes,” he says, “you got interesting timing that’s all.” It’s in his dry voice again and she laughs.

She supposes dead bodies and poo aren't really things people tend to bond over.  
But then again, they are not like other people.

“You know, I’ve heard it’s easier to use a shovel than a spade,” she says, mocking his handy work, but she can’t hold her frown and starts grinning almost immediately again.  
The top of Athos’ ears are a little red.   
  
He tries to shove her in. She sprits away laughing.

 

—- 

  
No matter what they plan to do, she meets up with Athos at the same time, at the same place every day.  
Sometimes he looks so exhausted she wants to send him back into his house immediately.

 But he always guesses what she's thinking and shakes his head in disagreement.  
“Bad day,” is all he says, but he follows her with a steady pace and with his shaking bones. 

On those days he doesn’t say much, he doesn’t do a lot either, but he’s there, and that’s enough.  
At the end of the day, they will sit on the steps before her door and they study the growing tree.

 “Why are we going through all this trouble?” Athos asks one late rainy afternoon.

Before she would grow angry with him for his cruel questions and his doubt, but she’s understands him better now.  
She has grown to realise that he asks things like this because he wants reassurance that there is a reason to live, that there is a reason to care and carry on. 

“It is the will of humans that makes living a hell on earth. It is only our will that will change it,” she whispers and she wonders if she has betrayed herself by accident, or whether she chose her words on purpose.

But he doesn’t look up, he has disappeared in his own thoughts and she thinks, _should I tell him?_

 

—-

 

Two long days pass after their sewer bonding and that one question returns to her. _Should I tell him?_

The sun is slowly disappearing behind the houses and she thinks on her way home, _I want him to know, I want him to know everything so badly.  
_ Ahe decides to do it, suddenly, in the spur of the moment, because the evening is beautiful and the air is brisk.  
She feels a kind of hope that she hasn’t felt in quite some time. 

She turns around.  
She wants him to get to know her, and she wants to know him, every bit of him but most of all what part of him is fading away.  
She’s never seen the inside of Athos house, she realises, and he’s never seen mine. _Will he still want to?_

   
But when she arrives at this house and knocks on the door with all the courage she can find, a stranger opens the door.  
“Hello,” he says and his eyes trail over her face.  
She doesn't know him, but he does know her, for a look of understanding passes over his face.

“You must be Sylvie,” he says grinning.

 “Yes,” she confirms, “I am.”

“Come in,” the stranger says as though he lives there too.

And maybe he does, Sylvie has never actually questioned whether Athos lives alone or not, whether he has family or friends.  
They’ve spoken about their lives and interests together, about politics and the city, but because she met him every day alone she had made assumptions, that are now swept away.

She follows the stranger to the back of the house, he walks in the same way Athos does. It strikes her as odd.   
He has a scar on his face and a kind smile.  


In the small kitchen -it has same tiles as she has, she notices for no reason- sit two other men. They are all large, not in body, but in presence.  
Athos stands near the sink. 

“Sylvie,” he says, stunned, “what are you doing here?”

Her mind grasps vaguely that there is some unspoken rule she has just broken.

“Ah, this is the illustrious Sylvie,” one of the men at the table says, “we’ve heard so much about you.”  
He says it more to Athos than to her, a joke she’s missing. Athos smiles sheepishly in return. 

“And I haven’t heard a word about you.” She says, fight or flight, she tends to chose the first.

He laughs and stands up, “Aramis,” he introduces himself, “these are d’Artagnan and Porthos.”  
The other two men offer her their hands, dry and calloused as well, reminding her of Athos' hand when she first shook his.

“I’m sure we’ll get along fine, if you’ve met one of us, you’ve met us all,” Aramis when she keeps quiet.  
  
It’s another inside joke, a secret all five of them know about. The four men laugh.  
Athos looks at her apologetically.  
“And I’m sure Athos has told you all about—,” Aramis adds, but he’s interrupted by the younger one of the four, d’Artagnan,  
“Aramis, now is not the time.”  
  
“We’re just talking,”  
  
The camaraderie, they way they hold themselves, how ‘subtly’ Athos didn’t notice her un-humanness.  
It makes her heart beat twice as fast. She looks to Athos, who sees through her forced smile immediately and notices the bewilderment underneath.  
_No, please, tell me I'm wrong._  

“Sylvie,” Athos starts and his tone betrays her instincts are right.  
She doesn’t want him to salvage what they had, if the words that follow are what she fears.  

"It’s not what you think,” he continues, but she doesn't let him finish and does the only thing that she believes can save her. She runs.

Out of the house, through the streets and faster.  
She climbs the scaffold, and descends, and into the city she disappears with only one thought in her mind, _what if she had told him._

 Oh moons of Mother Earth, what if she had told him?

It would have been the end of her.   
  
Fight or flight, flight it is, for Athos is a soldier. 

  
\---

 

_Excerpt from ‘Management of Rogue Robotics, Hand Book for members of a 12 member company, level 1’ (page 27):_  
  
_1\. Rules of engagement  
_ _(a) A soldier may never engage with a robotic by themselves. Engagement is only conducted by a company battalion under strict supervision of a commanding officer. A cadet must at all times consider the different capabilities a robotic may posses. Engagement analysis is necessary before engagement itself to understand the kind of robotic one is dealing with.  
Engagement with androids may be adapted to what the commanding officer decides, is most applicable to the situation.  
This can be done through direct attack and elimination, infiltration, seduction, bribing [...]._

_(b) It is important to remember that no matter the outer resemblances, a robotic is not human. A mistake will be ruinous. A robotic will lie and cheat to save its existence, but it is incapable of feeling human compassion and will take every opportunity to eliminate the human race._  
  
  


She tries not to generalise. It’s something androids face everyday and so she’s careful not to do it herself, but soldiers.  
Soldiers, they are the bane of every android’s existence, the grim reapers, they are the boogeyman under children’s beds, the rats that come out of the the shadows when you finally feel safe. 

Clean up crews, neutrality missions, droid control, carnage corps, many words to describe the same.

Even if you think of bribing them, of begging, or running, it would not change your fate.  
The company soldiers are trained specifically for eliminating androids, and that alone.  
Whatever loophole of human empathy might have existed a long time ago, since the first android rising they are trained specifically not to see androids as alive.  
It’s a water tight system that erases all possibilities of pity or of mercy, of kindness.  

In all her time of existence she has never understood why humans fear androids so much.  
If artificial intelligence equals humanity’s mind and its intelligent behaviour, does itnot also have the same capability of caring, of being hurt and feel everything that exists in the universe?

   
She thinks the way humans fear androids says more about themselves than it says about her.  
Their fear of the Other, their terror of having to face one day in the future the kind of oppression and hate they impose themselves.  
And even if droids were capable of this, do they not have the right to determine their own lives, are they not sentient beings capable of evil, but good as well?

   
How to fight dehumanisation when you are not fully human.

Worst of all is when they don’t allow you to die.  
Humans never think about this, that there exists a right to die.  
But androids know, for they are reused, or ripped apart and put into storage, left on garbage dumps, but they are still there, for eternity, incapable of moving but alive and existing and aware.  
Unable to do anything about it.

   
She has felt that helpless and all she had wanted was to die. She begged the soldiers to kill her. They didn’t.They left her for the next clean up crew to come.

 

\---

   
She thinks about disappearing again, back to her old schemes of planet hopping.  
But things have changed, she has reason to stay this time, more than one.  
  
She already knows what she’s going to do. She already knew the moment she ran out of Athos’ house.  
But she's scared, so very scared.

 She tries to swallow her fears and despair. Change always starts with oneself.  
She can make a stand or flee, fight or flight. She was always a fan of the former anyway.

Something else has been on her mind for a long time now…words she’s been too afraid to repeat out loud when she first heard them, whispers of another android rising.

 

\---

 

She’s hiding in the field across her house. Someone is inside, she can see their shadow through the curtains and she’s sure it’s Athos.  
She wonders if she could lie to herself for one more night and listen to his sweet words and forgetabout it all for a little longer.  
  
Instead she digs between the flowers beds in the brown earth until she finds the gun and the powder she had hidden there.  
Then she walks towards the house, in a straight line. 

She isn’t sure what she will do, she almost prays for an answer, but it doesn’t come, she keeps walking and the house is coming closer.

She passes her tree and opens the door.  


She squeezes the gun tighter under her coat.

She steps into the kitchen.

It's Athos, she was right. He looks up the moment she pushes the door open. Same tiles as his kitchen.  
In a fleeting moment she realises he isn’t one of the disappearing anymore, someone has lit a small flame of life inside his heart.  
She swallows and ignores the hurt. She lets the realisation go.

_I’m not afraid._  

She points the gun at him and steadies her heart, to get down to business. She wonders if he practiced a speech.  
Sylvie breaks the silence with a question. “How much time do I have?” 

“No one is coming for you,” he responds immediately, trying to sound reassuring.It is not working.

She feels a purple hurricane turning in her stomach instead.

“Don’t take me for a fool, Athos,” she spits, angry. More angry than she's ever felt before.

 

He looks at her in sorrow, but not not for himself, for her.  
He moves closer, his hands slightly raised to show her he has no weapons on him.  
She pushes the hammer of the gun back with a click, warning him.  
He still moves closer until the gun digs into his belly.

 If he's as well trained as she believes he is, he'll be able to kill her before she takes her shot.  
She takes a step back. He doesn't follow. 

“I swear to you, no one is coming.”

She laughs harshly, and repeats her words, “please, don’t take me for a fool.”  
 

He releases the air he was holding in his lungs, he looks at her for a quiet moment.  
 

“I swear to you I’m telling the truth. I’m one of the Queen‘s Musketeers.”  
 

She almost drops the gun. She doesn't know what to say, to laugh or howl or kill him.  
Why can't he end it? Why does he need to toy with her like this? 

  

“Don’t take me for a fool!”Tears run down her face, from frustration and pain combined, she knows they won’t taste salty.  
“Please,” she breathes in deeply, trying to collect her thoughts and says, “please, just tell me.”

   
“Sylvie,” he says, his voice full of care and carefulness.

   
“Yes, yes, you swear! I heard you loud and clear, but a soldier's word is meaningless to beings like me,” she responds,  
“so you make up lies you cannot prove to lure me into a your honey-worded trap."  
  
She lets out a shuddering breath. “I would have preferred it if you had killed me the moment we met than making me believe I had a friend." 

She wants to be believe so badly, to listen to his sweet words and believe for a little longer.  
Athos steps back, hands still up.  
She immediately directs the gun higher, towards his heart. 

He lifts his shirt carefully and there where the burn should have been that marks all soldiers, there is the symbol of the fleur-de-lis.

 She stares.

   
The Queen's Musketeers, a relic from the first android rising, a group of humans that swore loyalty to one of the first android leaders Anne.  
They eventually formed a group of soldiers, protecting androids who needed their help. Being able to work more in the open, the humans did what the droids could not do themselves.

She's still staring.  
Turmoil is ripping her heart in two.  
_No_. No it can’t be, but there is no scar, no burn and a tattoo is permanent and cannot easily be hidden, using the fleur-de-lis is punishable by death, who would risk walking around with that?

  
Athos drops the hem of his shirt and moves to the sink, a deja-vu of what happened in his house overwhelms her.  
He gets her a glass of water. She wants to say she rarely gets thirsty, only when she overheats, but she appreciates the gesture.

  
“I’m sorry I entered your house without your permission.”  
  
  
She looks at him in astonishment, it is the least worry on her mind.  
She should probably put away the gun, but she keeps it pointed at him. 

“The other men, in your house?” She asks. She hasn’t taken the water yet, so Athos puts the glass on the table.

“They’re a part of the Parisian garrison. There aren’t many of us here, but we meet once in a while. It’s nice to be around those who know the truth about who you are.”

He looks directly at her when he says the last part.He isn’t being very subtle, but is he ever?  
She supposes he's right, now is not the time to talk around things.

 She looks back at him, doesn't break the eye contact as she puts the gun on the table and takes the glass instead.   
She studies him. She can see a few freckles have appeared on his nose after working for many hours in the sun. 

"I don't believe you."

"I understand."

"This might be a new hoax, to have out outlawed symbol tattooed to lure androids in," she says, but she can hear the doubt in her own voice, it's not the best theory she could have come up with and Athos looks at her with the same thought on his mind.

“I haven’t forgiven you,” she says instead.

“I understand,” he answers and he beams. It looks out of place on his solemn face. It’s gone very quickly, almost like as if she imagined it.  
She hugs him tightly then, impulsively.  
Who would have thought, she thinks, she’s never thought a human like this before.

   
He holds onto her as tightly as she holds him. Perhaps he had been afraid too, of losing her.  
After a while she lets go, puts the glass back on the table and takes his hand, she pulls him gently to the living room.

  

\---

   
They sit in silence for a long time and she doesn't say a thing until that violet whirlwind inside her is calm again.  
It remains there, waiting to be unleashed, but it's humming instead of thrumming.

“You knew?” Sylvie asks.  
Athos moves his head in affirmation. He sits across her.  
Too away far to her liking.

He’s very observant, she likes that about him. He’s stays a quiet a lot, but when he says something, it shows his thoughtful mind.

“How?”

 “There was something different about you.” His voice makes an interesting sound, there’s something tender in it, it’s deep and secret.

“I’m sure you tell all the girls that,” Sylvie responds.

He looks up to her in surprise, like the thought he might be flirting with others is something that has never occurred to him before.  
Maybe it is the thought of flirting at all that has him flabbergasted.  
  
She wonders what it would be like if she had met him at another time in his life, if the collapsed star inside him didn’t eat him up from the inside out. 

“I’ve never seen someone care the way you do, Sylvie.”

She doesn’t know what to say, so she stands up instead and walks slowly towards him.  
When she reaches his side of the room, she kneels between his legs and looks up.  
She kisses him softly, her lips barely brushing his, she runs her fingerbehind his right ear, over his neck.  
Their breath mingles, she stays close to him, wishing to hold him tightly again, but she doesn’t.  
 

“What was that for?” he whispers. Perhaps it isn’t a collapsed star yet, but a supernova that he’s keeping inside. 

“There’s something different about you,” she echoes,“and because I could, because I like you, Athos de de la Fère.”

She kisses him again, she hears his shuddering breath, his eyes close slowly.  
His shoulders remain tense. She slides her hands to the side of this face to tilt his head a little bit and deepen the kiss.  
  
He kisses her back this time, almost too hard, like he’s afraid she might slip through his fingers.  
  
He bites her lower lip and the sensation makes her giggle.  
He pulls back, colour has arisen in his face and his lips are redder than usual.  
He looks at her in wonder. “I liked it,” she responds brightly and almost childish in her euphoria to his unsaid question. 

“That’s good,” he responds, a different heat burns on his cheeks, but not quite one out of shame, “me too.”

“Then do it again,” and so he does.

In-between the kisses she undresses him partially, slowly. It feels like they have all the time in the world.

The fear of before has turned toreliefand then to exhilaration. It has taken a hold of her, she wants him to know she has seldom been happier.  
  
A Queen’sMusketeer. A dream, but one that might come true. She cannot believe, but yet she does.

  
She always thought it would be faster, more impatient, but now that it’s actually happening, that she’s kissing another being, she wants the moment to last forever.  
Athos slowly pulls away, she follows him, his mouth, unwilling to stop the kiss.

 He laughs quietly. She loves that smile of him and how she wants to make him laugh again.

He kisses her neck softly and his hand disappears under her shirt, he helps her out of it, pulls it over her head, her wrap goes along with it.  
Her hair springs back in place. He touches it tenderly, in reverence.  
He scatters kisses over her collarbones, her neck, he unhooks her bra and with every new thing he does she feels warmer inside.

   
She studies his face, in complete concentration, his mouth a smile that he isn’t aware of.

 She wonders how she got so lucky. His hand brushes over one of her nipples, something thrums inside her and she lets out of soft sound, but then he moves his hands to her lower back.

“Stop!” she says, “stop” softer the second time.  
 

He stands back immediately. His mouth is open, as though he’s out of breath and she thinks for a moment in glee, that’s because of me but he looks scared too, apologetic,  
“I’m sorry—“ he starts.

“No, no,” she whisper, reassuring him, he still looks doubtful, “I—“

She isn’t sure how to say this, she wants him to continue, but then he’ll truly realise she isn’t human, she’s a droid.  
Artificial intelligence, more human than humans. 

   
She turns around then, without further hesitation. She knows what he will see, and proud she may be, but she’s relieved that she doesn’t have to see his reaction.  
  
She supposes it’s the equivalent ofa scar, but she’s trying to unlearn the tendencyto equate her experiences to those of humans.  
They have value regardless of seeming human. She no longer wishes to be equal and in the blank new canvas of her android identity she wants to colour in her own understanding of what it means to live and exist.

And so she waits for the man she thinks loves her back to react.

   
Her lower back and her legs, hidden by her skirt, are a mismatch of different plates.  
She loves the color of her skin in all its warmth, but she knows that the nails are darker, some parts are rusted, some lighter.  
No pattern can be discovered and most of all, distinctively non-human.

Her legs blown off by explosion near Storage locker 5200-BC, convulsing from the pain, she waited there, in between life and death, until the clean up crew would come.   
Not to kill her, because she can’t die according to humanity, since she never lived anyway, but to recycle her.  
But they never did, she was found by a droid, a kind she did not know still existed, who saved her, whose name she lost in her scrambled memory.  
She had looked so much like Sylvie and she had shown her how to built new parts, new legs, how to pass, how to change appearances, but most of all, what her true value was.

 

Athos interrupts her thoughts when he trails his fingers very softly over her plates. She can feel it and a tremor runs through her body. Shelets her head hang, relaxed.  
  
From the beginning he has assumed she had the same sensitivities as he did, similar vulnerabilities, theabilityto feel joy and pain and he does it again.  
She thinks he doesn’t know how rare that is.

He kisses her neck softly, continues to caress her back. She turns around, the look on his face can only be described as soft and so very loving.   
A sad and remote man capable of great gentleness.  
  
They stay like that for a while. She turns around to kiss him again, she can’t get enough of it, but he takes a careful step back before she gets the chance.

 

He undresses himself, he takes off his shoes, his pants, his socks, his underwear and waits without shame.  
It’s her turn.  
She slowly walks up to him, she slides her fingers over his shoulders, letting him know it’s all right, he smiles to her, it’s a different smile , less in awe, more challenging.

Okay, she thinks, I’ll play this game.

The smirk on her face must show him her plans for he blushes. She hasn’t seen that one before.  
He’s clearly aroused and she feels satisfied in a way she didn’t know was possible, a kind of happiness that’s different than from the kindshe has felt before.  
  
_That’s because of me_ and _who would have thought_.

She bites his shoulder softly and walks around him, her fingers trailingover his ribs.  
She can’t stop touching him. She studies his back in return.  
  
She supposes she hadn’t realised that the fact that he’s a musketeer means he must have fought many times.  
He has his own chaoticpattern of different colours on his back.   
She touches the darker parts softly. His breathing hitches, not in pain nor fear, but in anticipation.

   
She copies his actions, softly kisses the side of his neck, pushes aside his hair like he had done for her, but she changes her mind suddenly.  
She kisses his spine instead, bites in the soft places. He lets her explore as much she likes, and by the sounds and moans that escape him she can hear he likes it too.

 She moves up again, wraps her arms around his chest and thinks, _you are the most beautiful person I’ve ever met._  
But it’s Athos that beats her to it, in a voice that’s out of breath, that’s overwhelmed and joyous.  
He turns around and takes her in his arms instead.  
  
He kisses her deeply and says, “I’ve never met someone as beautiful as you.”  

And she knows then, that he loves her completely, utterly, for what she is.

 

\---

 

Athos is sleeping behind her, he’s only wearing a shirt and for some reason it amuses her.  
  


She sits on the table and thinks. Athos had mentioned a word before, one she didn’t know yet, a word no droid is allowed to have in their vocabulary, sedition.  
Slowly she starts to write, in the language of this planet, because here it will start -she has decided.

 “Liberté, égalité, fraternité” she writes down and stares for a while, then continues, in a frenzy, a dark purple thunder thrumming beneath her sternum once more.

   
“Androids and allies, hear my words and read carefully, for the time has come to determine how we live our lives and die, because no one else will chose for usever again.”  
  
  


**Author's Note:**

> Inspired by a discussion on droids in Star Wars with my wonderful beta and how they are disregarded continuously without taking into account the fact they are sentient beings.   
> Combine this with listening too much to all of Janelle Monae's CDs, specifically the song [Many Moons](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LHgbzNHVg0c) (perhaps that droid that saved Sylvie was called[ Cindi Mayweather](http://www.transchordian.com/2013/10/metropolis-janelle-monaes-hidden-sci-fi-epic/)) and a story full of social commentary was born!
> 
>  Valecianas do not exist, think of it as a combination of a mango and a valencia orange.
> 
> [ The right to die](http://www.bbc.co.uk/ethics/euthanasia/overview/introduction.shtml) is actually also a debate among humans and a very serious one. I hope I haven’t hurt or offended anyone by writing it about it in this way.
> 
> I just love Sylvie so much. <3  
> Thanks for reading!


End file.
